CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality

• Author: Duke Pollard
• Profession: Sitting senior judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the highest appellate municipal court of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)
• Pages: 793-803

CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality 793

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CARICOM REGIONAL ORGANISATION FOR

STANDARDS AND QUALITY (CROSQ)

The question concerning when the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME)

will come into being is frequently posed. To this question the response must be that the

CARICOM Single Market and Economy is not an event but a process. Consequently,

the CSME will not automatically come into being when the Revised Treaty of

Chaguaramas enters into force or is provisionally applied, pending its definitive entry

into force. The coming into operation of the Revised Treaty either by provisional

application or formal entry into force is but one step, albeit an important step, in the

process which may be expected to be protracted. Putting the CSME into operation is

dependent inter alia, on the coming on stream of several important institutions of which

the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality is one. Other important

institutions in this context are the Caribbean Court of Justice, the Regional Competition

Commission, the Regional Accreditation Organisation and the Regional Intellectual

Property Rights Office; all of which are to a greater or lesser extent indispensable for

the efficient functioning of the CSME.

As mentioned in the Introduction, the establishment of the CARICOM Single

Market and Economy evidenced a significant paradigm shift on the part of competent

decision-makers of CARICOM. In the previous dispensation, as set out in the original

Treaty of Chaguaramas, the emphasis was on inward looking, protectionist, import

substitution which differed from the emphasis in the CSME on export-led, internationally

competitive production of goods and services. In fact, given the twin phenomena of

globalisation and liberalisation, this new paradigm is critical for ensuring regional

survival in an intensely competitive international environment. For even when goods

and services are being produced for the regional domestic market they are vulnerable to

competition from third States. This fact underscores the need for the Region to produce

and provide internationally competitive goods and services.

For goods and services produced and provided in the Region to be internationally

competitive, they will have to satisfy the expectations of the consumer who is now

better informed about quality requirements on account of the communications revolution

and easy access to information. For regional products it cannot be business as usual

where manufacturers of inferior products were assured regional markets by high

protective barriers. Consequently, quality considerations currently bulk large in the

productive process and conformity assessment procedures assume a new significance.

This explains the thrust of the preambular paragraph of the Agreement establishing

CROSQ which expressly recognises